Another misguided effort to control people is looming.  This time, the health police want to legislate chain restaurants by requiring calorie counts for their meals.  Ah, the slippery slope, as my foie gras will soon be marked by footnotes advising me of its health impact, not to mention cruelty to ducks.

Courtesy of Althouse, my favorite liberal with a mortgage, comes this story of good intentions gone awry.  Giving examples that fly in the face of common wisdom (proving yet again that while it may be common, it is hardly wisdom), we learn that the chicken caesar salad at Chili’s is worse than the sirloin steak.  So who goes to Chili’s for either?  Okay, that’s not the point.  The point is that we wouldn’t know this but for the fact that Chili’s tells us about the calorie and fat content.  So now we can make a more educated choice.  And isn’t that good?

As Ann Althouse concludes, there’s nothing wrong with restaurants telling us, the consumers, whatever we want to know because it’s a good marketing move on the part of these chains.  But to compel them to do so by law is a major shift of gears.  The message then is pure paternalism.  We are no longer responsible for our choices.  We cannot be trusted to make our own choices.  We require Government to tell us what to eat.

Last night, I watched a particularly insipid television show called Shaq’s Big Challenge (or something to that effect).  The idea was that Shaq, big time basketball star, would take a bunch of morbidly obese kids and help them to lose weight.  The subplot was that Shaq would then push his plan into their school to help other children to lead healthier lives, using his morbidly obese kids as proof that it can be done.

Wait a minute!  Schools don’t require gym anymore?  School lunches are less healthy than Chili’s?  Schools are out of the child health business?  But Government doesn’t see schools as a place to regulate, and would rather beat up on chain restaurants.  What’s wrong with this picture.

The most striking part of Shaq’s fat farm was the parents of these kids.  It’s not that they didn’t have a clue that a Big Mac 5 times a day would have an adverse impact on their children.  It’s not that they didn’t notice that 12 year old junior was tipping the scales at 227.  It’s that they couldn’t manage to be a parent and deal with the horrendous situation that gave rise to their morbidly obese child.  The parents sucked.  But nobody had the guts to say so.  Not even big man Shaq; while he and his co-stars were happy to beat up on the kids for living a disastrously unhealthy lifestyle, the parents (whose commentary proved that they should be doing commercials for condoms) went untouched.

If the health police, the ones who wake up every morning with absolute certainty that they know better than anyone else how we should live our lives and want to ram it down our throats, need some object of their control, go to the source.  But leave the rest of us out of your control-freak grasp.

Please understand, I am not antagonistic to good health.  Not at all.  I am against the use of law to control every facet of human behavior.  One of the great pleasures of being alive is to make the occasional poor choice because…well, just because.  I don’t need to have a good reason.  I don’t need to be able to explain it to anyone’s satisfaction.  I take responsibility for my life, and in case Shaq (Hi Shaq!) is reading this, for the lives of my children.  I do some things wrong.  But it’s my life and those are my choices.  I will take the weight.

Shifting responsibility away from those who should bear it is a disincentive for individual responsibility, and hence individual freedom.  Parents are no longer responsible for their obese children; Chili’s is.  As we continue to travel down the path of passing laws to control poor choices, we will ultimate find ourselves living in a world without color, beauty or passion.  Sure, we may be healthier (though I have some serious doubts that the law of unintended consequences won’t put the cabash on that), but I’ll be damned if I have to eat tuna fish with a piece of bibb lettuce for every meal for the rest of my life.  And pass the foie gras before my Chateau D’yquem evaporates.